This is the Story of Life
On Tuesday, I flew to and from Houston to shoot videos for the Global Methodist Church. They are putting together video training for church planters and asked me to help. I shot three videos on Outreach and Evangelism. I downloaded the Netflix Documentary “Life on Our Planet” series to watch on my iPad during my flight. After the plane took off and leveled out, I plugged in my headset and pressed start on “Chapter 1: The Rule of Life.” I was pleasantly pleased to hear the beautiful baritone voice of Morgan Freeman begin the video with the words, “This is the story of life.”
As the video began, I heard Morgan use words like “conquer,” “rule,” and “competition” to describe the evolutionary journey of our planet. “This is the story of life?” I confusedly thought to myself. I took out my cell phone, opened up a “Notes” app, and began to jot down phrases and sentences that he used to explain the billions of years that it took for life to evolve. My list grew long. I heard phrases like:
• …a fearsome predator…
• …both sides are armed and prepared for a fight.
• …the great battles of survival and the dynasties that would take over the world.
• …a global power…
• …iconic dynasty…
• …absolute dominion…
• …the rise and fall of these dynasties…
• …doing battle…
• …the battlefield…
• …global mass extinction…
• …the edge of extinction…
• …the mightiest of dynasties…
• …keen to protect…
• …the best form of defense is attack.
• …the ultimate predator…
• …mass extinction…
• …how dynasties will rise and how they will fall.
• …the 1% that made it through.
• …fights for survival…
Then I heard sentences like:
• The best adapted will always win through.
• Everything…is fighting for survival.
• It’s chemical warfare.
• The best adapted will rule.
• The acute competition comes from one’s own kind.
• He needs a territory of his own.
• Who will be the first to back down or attack?
• With nothing to separate them, a fight is inevitable.
• The world has rarely been stable.
• Ours can be a brutal planet.
• Even the world’s greatest predator knows when she’s been beaten.
• The annihilation was global.
• Competition drives evolution.
Throughout the 42 minutes of the first episode, I kept thinking to myself, “He’s using the language of war and violence to describe the evolution of our planet.” Further reflection reminded me that I had learned in high school about “survival of the fittest” when it came to evolutionary biology. Evolution is violent. This is the story of life that Morgan Freeman described.
Now, this blog is not about a debate about making sense of biblical creation in light of evolution. What came to my mind, I believe prompted by the Holy Spirit, was how this video helped explain the horrific war in Israel. Now let me be clear that this blog is also not about the politics of the Israeli/Palestine conflict either.
The video made me think theologically about the inability of humans to get along and our propensity to treat one another with aggression, dominance, competition, and violence. One does not have to be a historian to trace thousands of years of humanity’s inhumanity to one another. We have known very little time in recorded history when blood has not been split on our blue-green planet. Today’s news stories globally and locally will report stories of bombs, mass shootings, theft, rape, and murder. This is nothing new.
Putting on my biblical lens, I go back to the story of creation in Genesis 1 and 2. First, a cosmic Creator speaks the cosmos into existence by “fiat,” the Latin word for the phrase “Let it be done.” The first humans were given the responsibility of tending to the creation. Similarly, in the second more intimate creation story, Adam is given supervisory responsibility for his garden home. The ones who were made in the image of God are filled with the “ruah” or “breath” of God and were given the job of stewarding the planet. This was God’s creative intent for human beings.
But to be true to the biblical text, we have to, in the words of Paul Harvey, tell “the rest of the story.” The story of God continues in Genesis 3 with Adam and Eve’s act of treason in the fruit-eating incident. Sadly, it came with consequences. Humanity’s loss of innocence and intimacy with God spawned a world of aggression, dominance, competition, and violence. This also is the woeful story of life.
Just look at the next story in the Bible. In Genesis 4, Cain kills Abel. “One day Cain suggested to his brother, ‘Let’s go out into the fields.’ And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother, Abel, and killed him”(Genesis 4:8 NLT). Violence enters our narrative as God’s image-bearing, God-breathed people. A quick look at the early chapters reveals that this propensity towards aggression, dominance, competition, and violence continues on the planet. Morgan Freeman is right. This is the story of life! Regrettably, ours is a planet where murder is commonplace and violence is assumed.
But unlike in the Netflix documentary, all this viciousness happens under the watchful eye of God. For Christ-followers, we know that the watchful eye of God is not blind to the aggression, dominance, competition, and violence of his image-bearing, God-breathed creations. In Genesis 6, the author comments twice:
“The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil.” Genesis 6:5 (NLT)
“Now God saw that the earth had become corrupt and was filled with violence. God observed all this corruption in the world, for everyone on earth was corrupt.” Genesis 6:11-12 (NLT)
“The Lord observed…” and “Now God saw…” God observes and sees then and now, our inhumanity to one another. God sees the bombs, mass shootings, theft, rape, and murder that we read in our daily news cycles. Not one child whether in Israel or the Gaza Strip who was killed in the war dies without God seeing. Not one of the 8 people killed and 13 wounded in Lewiston, Maine a few days ago without God’s seeing.
But God does not just observe the violence of our planet. God acts. The Gospel, the Good News, is that in Christ, God has stepped into our world of aggression, dominance, competition, and violence. Jesus, the Prince of Peace, ushered in a new Kingdom not established by brute strength, but inaugurated through surrender and sacrifice. The Trinity’s response to our sin-sick, war-torn, blood-stained, blue-green planet was to send the Son to it. He would be born of a virgin, named “Jesus,” and live in utter obscurity in a nowhere village called Nazareth. At 30, the Rabbi would gather around him twelve “talmidim,” the Hebrew word for “disciples” or “apprentices.” For three years, these twelve would observe and learn the way of the Kingdom of God. In the spirit of “watch me then do,” they would observe their Rabbi as he taught, preached, and healed. Jesus would ultimately be violently killed by a collusion of religion and government. The centers and leaders from Jerusalem and Rome would work in concert to crucify God in the flesh on a criminal’s cross at a garbage heap outside of the City of David. Three days later, Jesus will rise from the dead, defeating sin, hell, and death. This is the real story of life!
This is also the story of our Rabbi calling a surrendered and sacrificed people to live as his apprentices in subversion to a world filled with aggression, dominance, competition, and violence. God’s people, the Church, the Body and Bride of Christ are to be living witnesses of Kingdom way of life in the midst of creation bent on violence.
In my most recent book, Everybody Needs Some Cave Time: Meeting God in Dark Places,[1] I wrote a chapter about Samson in the cave of anger. I end the chapter with these words:
Many of us know of Francis, born in the Italian village of Assisi in 1182, famously known as St. Francis of Assisi. What you may not know is that he grew up in a wealthy, luxurious family. One day he met a beggar, and God used this encounter to change Francis’ life. Heartbroken at the beggar’s plight, he became a follower of Jesus. He entered the ministry without the blessing of his family and friends. For two years, Francis literally lived in a cave. In this cave, he studied the Bible and prayed. It was from this cave haven that Francis fell in love with God’s creation, especially animals. This was a cave of peace and serenity.
After emerging from this cave, Francis spent his life in service to others. His famous prayer, the “Prayer of St. Francis,” creates space in the hearts of potentially angry women and men to “be angry yet not sin.” It transforms a cave of anger into a meeting place with the Prince of Peace who makes it a cave of serenity in the soul of Jesus followers, in which they can deal with their anger, pain, and grief. Make this your prayer.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love;
when there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand,
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.[2]
[1] My book can be bought at www.inviteresources.com/lp/cave-time.
[2] Jorge Acevedo, Everybody Needs Some Cave Time: Meeting God in Dark Places, Invite Resources, 18-19.